NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 59 
Foss Mereorrre.—A new meteorite has just been discovered 
in the Miocene deposits of Greenland, and brought to England. 
It has been offered, we understand, to the Trustees of the British 
Museum for the sum of 240/. This is the first instance on record 
of a truly fossil meteorite having been met with. — The Academy. 
ANTHROPOLOGY. 
Dm Man Exist IN THE Tertiary Ace?— The evidence ad- 
duced by M. Bourgeois of the discovery of flint flakes and scrapers 
in the Miocene strata of Thenay, along with remains of the 
hornless rhinoceros and mastodon, proves, according to M. 
Hamy, that man was an inhabitant of Miocene Europe. It is, 
however, rejected by most of the French and English savants, 
because M. Burgeois has not shown that the implements in ques- 
tion may not have been derived ultimately from the surface of the 
ground, where they are very abundant. While M. Hamy acknowl- 
edges this to be the case, he does not see its full bearing on the 
value of the testimony. The implements are probably of a Qua- 
ternary, or even of post-quaternary age, and certainly cannot be 
considered decisive of the sojourn of man in Europe during the 
Miocene epoch, although the climate at the time was almost tropi- 
cal, and the conditions of life easy. Nor can the evidence of the 
grooved bones of Halithere, found by M. Delaunay at Puancé in 
Maine-et-Loire, be accepted, because it cannot be proved that the 
grooves may not have been caused by some other agency than 
that of man. The proof of the existence of man in Europe 
during the Pliocene epoch derived from the striz in the fossil 
bones found at Saint Prest, and in the valley of the Arno, accepted 
by M. Hamy, is equally unsatisfactory. The flint ‘‘ arrow-head” 
and other rude fragments said to have been obtained at the 
former place from the same horizon as the bones of Elephas 
meridionalis, by M. Burgeois, the stout champion of Miocene man, 
do not afford the precise and exact testimony which is demanded 
for the establishment of the case. 
The presence, indeed, of man in Europe in the Miocene and 
Pliocene epoch is as yet non-proven, and we must be content to 
await future discoveries. The results of the labors of archzolo- 
gists and geologists throughout Europe during the last ten years 
has not placed the advent of man further back than the river 
